Scripps owned WKBW was once the gold standard of TV in Buffalo. Then Granite Broadcasting came in, drove the station right into the ground and WKBW has not recovered.

Under Granite, equipment was often broken, good staffers left and the station’s standers and production value dropped to low levels.

Now, Scripps has come in and just to prop the once might station, but has found it a long road ahead.

Recently the station got to air the Monday Night Football game between the Buffalo Bills and the New England Patriots.

It was a chance for the station to get more eyeballs than they have seen in a long, long time.

While the game drew almost a 50 rating on WKBW, viewers were stuck seeing a number of technical problems and a very subpar producing of the post-game show.

In other words, WKBW had a chance to earn back some viewers and completely blew it.

New General Manager Marc Jaromin sent an email to the staff and he did not pull any punches about the on-air product.

“No polite way to say it, this past weekend WKBW, as a whole, did not deliver to even minimum professional expectations for our viewers, advertisers, and communities,” wrote Jaromin in part to the Channel 7 “team.” “We experienced significant issues, across multiple days, with marque content, basic delivery and viewer engagement. We need to, and will be, better than this past weekend.”

“Lowlights from this past weekend include Saturday, during the biggest Buffalo Bills broadcast of the year, we experienced lip-sync issues, as well as our local pre- and postgame editorial and production levels were well below NFL market expectations. Last night in prime, our audio was down for almost an hour and our viewer engagement was nonexistent.“

It’s sad to see a station that went from first to worst under Granite. blow a big chance to try and get some viewers back.

H/T Buffalo News